


I've Come to Talk With You Again

by Wirrrn



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 01:23:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16630226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wirrrn/pseuds/Wirrrn
Summary: Another late night meeting for the FBI's most unwanted and his personal One-Armed Bandit. Set between seasons 4-5





	I've Come to Talk With You Again

 

Mulder was trying to eat the meal the all-night diner had graciously prepared for him, really he was

(Although given the absurdly late hour shown by the gigantic, METROPOLIS-prop of a clock marking gargantuan time over on the far wall, his 'Late Dinner' was actually an 'Early Breakfast' right... now)

but in-between the nasty looks the cook kept shooting at him from behind the swinging doors to the kitchen

(he'd explained he had nothing to do with the Department of Health, but the guy just looked pointedly at his neat Armani suit and sneered)

and the fact that the large frog clinging to to the other side of the window glass right next to his head was staring at the meal with more enthusiasm than he was, Mulder had some definite suspicions about the chicken egg to cockroach egg ratio in his Spanish omelette.

-The FBI Agent started only slightly at the soft, sibilant hiss of air escaping the seat cushion opposite him, the dusty rasp of faux leather padding yielding to a well-muscled body clad in the real thing. Mulder yet again wondered how his companion managed to move like that, sliding into the booth opposite him with the boneless ease of a squid.

(No, not a cat; Mulder was trying to vary the array of metaphors he had for the man currently making a disinterested flick through the menu and tapping on the window glass beside the still determinedly clinging frog. Besides, no cat had as many lives as this man seemed to, and really, what squid worth its ink could change its camouflage as quickly? Mulder made a mental note to come up with a more fitting analogy).

Green lasers tracked over the diner coolly, taking in *everything*, with the quick, dispassionate stots of a predatory bird. The gaze whuffed into warmth only as it came into contact with Mulder's own face.

"Hey, Mulder." Alex Krycek's dusty burr rasped straight to the marrow of Mulder's bones, as always happened whenever his erstwhile partner decided to add excitement- and mayhem- to his life by arranging a meeting. He nodded at the window and its belligerent-looking passenger. "Let me guess; you ordered the frog's legs, right?"

Mulder half-turned in his seat, studied that wise little amphibian face. "-Not yet, no, but I'm starting to seriously think about it."

Krycek smirked around the finger of Cinnamon toast he'd abducted from Mulder's breakfast. "Tut,tut, Agent Mulder. Frogs are officially endangered all over the world now, what with this mass extinction they're going through. Actually, I'm surprised you haven't investigated it yet."

"-Why would I do... C'mon, Krycek; You're not suggesting the global Frog Die-Off is an X-File?"

"Mulder, frogs are highly susceptible to Environmental change. They make excellent Biohazard Indicators. If they started spawning black oil instead of white froth, scientists everywhere would know that Mother Earth was heading for one hell of a reaming. Do you really think the Consortium would allow a bunch of little green Paul Reveres to forewarn people of Colonization?"

Krycek's handsome face might as well be carved out of marble. Not for the first time, Mulder cursed his lack of colour vision, with which he might have been able to penetrate those twin emeralds to see whether his serene

//...friend?//

was kidding or not. All of his much-vaunted Profiling skills went straight to the Body Farm around this man.

As it was, the ex-agent changed the subject, calling the counter guy over to clear away the omelette

("you don't want to be eating any poultry products for the next month or two" was all he'd say, cryptically)

and ordering a large stack of hotcakes, asking for two sets of cutlery and insisting it be made without eggs, and Kosher.

Mulder raised his cocking brow in the manner Scully had been teaching him, but the young Russian didn't make eye contact, just waited until the plate was on the table and a spork before both himself and the older man, gesturing him to dig in.

The rail-thin cook

(never a good sign of quality food, Mulder thought)

appeared to be about to make some wisecrack or complaint about that 'Kosher' bit, but Krycek's hand disappeared into all that tight black leather

(Here Mulder actually found himself envious of a skinned, dead ruminant)

and produced a crisp, laminated card. "-Department of Health."

-The cook, who had evidently been willing to add Mulder to his limited hot food selection over just such a suspicion, took one look at the card, one look at Krycek, another at the way he was holding his spork, as though it was a deadly weapon

(and not just to the English Language)

and blanched paler than veal before scuttling back to the dark warmth of his kitchen like one of his own roaches.

Krycek's smirk turned into a warm smile as he watched his old partner settle back in his seat and tuck into the meal. It gave him pleasure to watch Fox eat.

(For the visual benefits of that amazing mouth forming an endless kinetoscope of erotic shapes, yes, but also for the vicarious happy he got from seeing Mulder partake of vitamins for a change. The FBI Agent lived on vending machines, water coolers and buzzing fluorescent light, and, as much as Krycek appreciated the resultant pallor and breakneck mood swings, he was hoping to gradually wean his former partner onto finer, fresher

(and less easily tampered with)

cuisine. True this was truckstop waffles with squeeze-bottle sauce, not Pheasante L'Orange with White Truffles, but hey, babysteps.

Krucek's gaze briefly flickered over the door to which the possibly anti-Semitic cook had retreated, then returned to his definitely Semitic companion's comfort, enjoying the look on the older man's face as he tucked into the waffles, sinking backwards into the warm leather

(the warm leather of the seat cushions, not that which Krycek was currently wearing, but 'All Good Things To Those Who Wait" was the Russian's motto; well, that and "Keep Watching the Skies").

Each, er, sporkful of waffle that went into that mouth and made that delectable mole off to one side flare, alluringly

(down boy!)

was another year off his allotted time in Hell, Alex reckoned. 

The young Russian watched Mulder watch him, and again marveled at the older man's perennial single status. Mulder was so jaw-droppingly gorgeous that the fact he wasn't making the hair of a different UFO-groupie stand on end with ecstasy under their tin-foil hats each night was an X-File in itself. The all-too rare pleasure radiating out of that defensively stoic face pulled at his tiny, black leather heart as he mulled that something he'd done had made Mulder happy enough to drop the impassive mask, however briefly.

And with luck, every strange, non-shrink wrapped and machine-dispensed item of foodstuff that passed that ludicrously beautiful face would make the Agent come to associate contentment and a warm belly with one Alexandyr Anton Krycek.

(Not all Psychology degrees come in a frame, Doctor Fox)

These thoughts were leading him nowhere good. If they kept up, Krycek was liable to just bound the table like the frog still damnably clinging to the outside window and beast-fuck Mulder in a frenzied dervish of leather and unleavened breakfast hotcakes, and that was the sort of thing that would tend to stick in the memory of even the stimulus-response type brain of Hitler's fry-cook back there.

Needing speedy, shiny distraction, the Russian's agile brain wrapped prehensiley around the least sexy thing it could think of.

"-Where's Scully?"

Mulder glanced up from his warm plate of Alex-by-proxy. "Hmm? Oh... back at the hotel."

A sable nod. "-Sleeping this 'sleep of the Just' I've heard so much about?"

"No; she said her bed was so hard it must have been made from the left over slot machines."

"-Leave it to The Bureau to find the only hotel in this whole neon desert without Garishly plush accommodation."

"Actually, I'm told all the hotels here are similarly uncomfortable. I suppose that way, guests do less sleeping and more gambling."

"-It's a Conspiracy, of course."

"What isn't?"

Krycek's smile stopped the room again. "-So, if she's counting neither sheep nor Aces and Eights, how'd you cover for your absence? The old divert-her-attentions- with-something-vile-and-inexplicable-to-Y-Section gambit?"

A snort. "I didn't have to, as a matter of fact. She went to Midnight Mass."

"-She found a chapel that performed other services than drive-through weddings? Here? she *is* good."

"Not only that, the hotel she found even came with an on-staff Rabbi for Jewish services. She said I'd be welcome to accompany her. I told her... I'd pass it over."

"-Uh-oh."

Mulder nodded, wincing at the memory. "I know, it just came out before I could stop it. She called me a drifting, faithless Meshuga."

"-That's hitting you where you live. And worship. Or don't worship, I suppose."

"She's probably praying for our Souls right now."

"-Yours, maybe Mulder, I doubt even Saint Dana of the Blessed Sceptics is *that* magnanimous, and anyway, my malnourished little soul is long gone."

"You should maybe join a Jazz band. Talk to Frohike-he knows some people who knows some people."

Mulder's eyes were as flat and dead as usual, giving away nothing, but Krycek could swear there was the tiniest ghost of a smile haunting those plush lips. He'd like to keep the conversation going a bit longer, see how far he could push it, but business before pleasure...

Mulder's eyes flicked from Krycek's chest

//face! I meant his face!//

to the dull, mental-institution/retirement home yellow manila folder that the Russian was pushing over the tabletop towards him.

He picked up the file, opened it and glanced at it.

And projectile-spat a mouthful of waffle across the restaurant at nigh-escape velocity, where it splattered against the window and scared the green jesus out of another window-clamped frog, which bleated croakily and fell down out of sight beneath the sill, to the loam.

"God Alex, this is... this is just *wrong*."

Krycek noted with an inner happy dance Mulder's use of his first name, but applied a choke hold on his resultant gleeful grin until it passed out. 

He nodded, sagely. "-I know, Mulder; this is beyond disgusting; and believe me, once you've had a living oil-slick treat you to a reverse enema, you build up a tolerance for Gross Outs."

Mulder stared down again at the glossy 8 x 10" abomination in his hands. His own naked body was there for all to see, in crisp black and white.

...This of course, was not what he found so disturbing. Certain events -namely years of being leaped on by various liver-coveting gumby types, pigment-slurping albinos, fern-imitating moth monsters and sentient oil slicks within dimly lit bathrooms all across the continental United States- had convinced him that he was not unattractive in certain circles

(admittedly pretty friggin' warped circles, but hey-any port in a storm)

So the sight of his own nude body in the photograph inspired no nausea in him- merely a quick mental note that, one of these days, he should really invest in a tanning lamp.

It was what his naked body was doing.

And with *whom*.

"Oh, *God*" he repeated. "This is I side of Walter I've never seen before. And never wanted to see, either."

"-I hear you." Alex paused, then shrugged and continued. "For a heart-stopping moment when I first saw it, I thought it was genuine..."

Mulder looked hurt. "Alexandyr Anton Krycek! You honestly thought I'd go behind your back like that?!"

A playful gleam in those jade eyes. "-No, I keep your body too empty of fluids. Anyway, it looks to me"

-a nod down at the photo- 

"-that you're going behind *Skinner's* back these days..."

A blurring movement of Mulder's facial muscles and The Pout became The Smirk. "He wishes."

Krycek grinned back. "-Yeah, he probably does."

"I really don't want to think about it. God, he's so Alpha Male he'd probably piss around my sofa to mark his territor- *Alex*! Now you've got me thinking about it!"

Krycek was regarding the photo with a dark look. "-I still can't believe they put *Skinner's* head on *my* body! Skinner has abs like that in his *dreams*. And why didn't they use the untouched photo, anyway? Surely the FBI's most Unstable Savant fucking a wanted Federal Fugitive is just as good Blackmail material?"

Mulder nodded in sympathy. "Hmm- clearly you're just not important enough these days, Alex."

"-This could be true. I knew I should have taken the Smoker up on that Tom Hanks Oscar Rigging Plot." Krycek leaned back in his seat. "-Which brings me to the point of all this. Our retaliation, against the Powers-That-Wanna-Be, for this slanderous, outrageous and frankly nauseating photograph." 

Mulder grinned evilly at his erstwhile partner, and nearly stopped the younger man's heart with glee in the process. "You're proposing we release a doctored photograph of our own? Like the First Elder playing Naked Twister with Eugene Victor Tooms, or some such thing?"

"-I was thinking more along the lines of going back to my Hotel room, fucking like crazed weasels before a video camera, and releasing the resultant footage onto the net. Just to set the record straight about your superior taste in bed partners, of course."

The FBI Agent took the safety off of another killer eyebrow. "Of course." He paused, then pushed the remains of his waffle off to one side. "Well Alex, sounds like a plan..."

-Some hours later, the Morph/Pilot that had been sent to this dry, garishly-lit citadel to take care of an urgent security matter for the Human Collaborators, paused for the umpteenth time in its work. 

Perhaps it was a side effect of this primitive Terran disguise, but the alien shapeshifter kept hearing distinct bangings and moanings from the motel outside it which it currently skulked. Bangings, moanings, a high-pitched, yet clearly male voice commanding someone else to keep giving him "the mother of all Anal-Probes, Alex!" and another, hoarser male voice yelling out grunting, sexually-charged Russian profanities that threatened to short-out the Pilot's Universal Translator with their earthiness.

This was really none of its concern. It was time to return to the task at hand. The Morph/Pilot shrugged its broad shoulders, removed the long, silver ice-pick from its pocket, and once again began skewering the small, frantically hopping frogs on the weapon with slow, practiced ease. They knew too much. Now nobody would make the rainbow connection.

 

\-----------------------END-----------------------------

**Author's Note:**

> This one was inspired by a really good, late (but not THIS late) night meal with a gentleman friend, the worrying threat to frogs wordwide from climate change and the chytrid fungus, and my continued fascination with Nicholas Lea.
> 
> The title, apart from coming from Simon & Garfunkel, is meant as a rip-off, er, homage to one of my favourite writers, the late Karl Edward Wagner, who frequently used such songs as titles for his great horror fic (interested parties should check out his  
> superb stories "Sticks" and "The River of Night's Dreaming").
> 
> As always, this fic is dedicated to Colton Haynes. He knows why :D


End file.
